Off The Beaten Path III

This post is to give some visual idea of what the property around my house is like, and some idea of how, even though it's located in the middle of a city, it's in many ways like being out in the country.

[If you click on the photos, you can see a larger image.]

This first photo is of the lower 50 or so feet of the driveway, to the far west of the house and facing north. Just past the left edge of the picture are back ends of the properties of neighbors. At the top of the picture (to the north) is an alley, which is my access to the rest of the city. Just on the other side of the alley is a six to eight foot drop-off into the back end of someone else's property. The white cement block wall you can perhaps see on the other side of the alley is the upper bit of a garage's back wall (the current owners ripped off the roof, because it hadn't been maintained before they bought it, and so was structurally unsound).

In the winter, I frequently have to park at the bottom of the drive -- assuming I can even get up the alley and get the vehicle into the drive. One winter, the neighbors contacted me because the van I had at the time had slid down into the alley, due to the ice and snow under it thawing and refreezing.

Don't ask me why my sister took this picture. Perhaps to remind herself that she doesn't have to rake leaves anymore, now that she has moved to an apartment.

This next photo was taken near the same location as the first, but facing east, so that we see more of the driveway. As may be apparent, this part of the drive is even steeper than the first section just off the alley (the alley is also a climb). So, in the winter, even if I do manage to get the vehicle into the driveway, and even if I do manage to get it to climb to the point where the drive turns from north to east, I frequently have lost so much momentum that I can't get any farther than right about here.

And my current vehicle supposedly has 4-wheel drive (it's a Kia). Amazingly, the Fiero I had when I bought the place did much better at climbing this many-staged hill in the winter. I mean, just an inch or so of snow is too much for this so-called 4-wheel drive Kia, but the Fiero climbed the hill with snow half way up to its axles!

The property is divided into six lots; five rectangular (their width is north-south, their depth is east-west), and one roughly triangular. The rectangular lots are "stacked" north to south; the southermost two are larger than the other three, they're fully wooded. The sort-of-triangular lot is the largest of the six, it's to the east of the first three rectangular lots. It's actually what's left of the original plot of all this area, before it was subdivided into my six lots and those of many of the neighbors.

I was told, by some of the original family, that this land used to be an orchard. I've seen an old hand-drawn map of the city which shows trees (I presume to represent the orchard) in this location.

To the left (north) of this photo is the first lot; there was once a large frame Italianate house on that lot, but it burned and was demolished before I bought the place. The driveway is on the second lot, and my house is on the third. The house's lot has three distinct levels; the lowest level is just to the right of where my sister would have been standing when she took this picture. I've been told that it used to be a tennis court, which would explain why it's so level and so obviously built up at its two far edges.

I guess my sister likes to take pictures. Lucky for me, else I'd not have these. Here, she has continued up the driveway, walking east from the previous photo, and has turned slightly to the south, so she'd be facing south-east.

In the foreground and going off to the right it the lowest level of the house's lot. As you can see, there is now a small grove of trees taking up one side of the the former tennis court.

Going across the center of the photo is the change in elevation between the middle and lowest levels of the lot. And the house is on the upper level.

Here she'd be standing near the edge of the upper level of the lot.

The house's front door is to the left; the back door (such as it is) opens onto this porch. The other back door (three, in fact, since I built the greatroom), at the far corner of the house from what is seen here, opens from the livingroon onto the patio.

Here she's standing just to the corner of the porch, facing north-northeast. The driveway is just on the other side of the large maple tree, about 9 to 18 inches lower than the yard (depending where you're at, of course).

The large Italianate house used to stand over there, on the other side of the drive. You may be able to see the depression in the ground where the fill in its basement has settled over the years. The double garage to the right belonged to the demolished house.

At the edge of the yard there, in the middle distance, is about a 15 foot drop-off to the alley. In the distance, past the trees, you may be able to make out a building. That's the roof of a small church.

Here, she's standing on the middle level of the house's lot, facing east-northeast.

I put in those steps and the small retaining wall to the left -- I can't decide whether I want to continue the wall from the other side of the steps on around (if I do, I'd no longer be able to get the lawn tractor into the upper part of the yard). Oddly enough, when I was putting in those steps, I discovered that there had been steps exactly there before ... I think someone must have taken most of the stones of the former steps, probably when the stones which originally edged the yard above the driveway were stolen (when I edged the upper level, I discoverd the stones still in the ground at the level of the drive).

Here, she's standing in much the same place is with the past photo, but has turned a bit to the right, so she'd be facing due east.

The "patio door" (as they call these center-hinged pseudo-french doors) on the porch opens into the front-room or family room (which formerly was the diningroom and a very badly-designed 1/2 bath). The triple windows at the center are for the kitchen; when I bought the place, the kitchen window was a small replacement-window, not much larger than the octogonal one above. The double window to the right is in the diningroom. Above the kitchen, with the octogonal window, is the master bath; this window is above a built-in set of drawers between two closets. Above the diningroom is the master bedroom (which, when I bought the place, was much the smallest of the four bedrooms). The diningroom had been a bedroom; with my redesign of the house, it can be used as a third bedroom, if need be. The two upstairs bathrooms (above the kitchen) have displaced one former bedroom.

Here, she's walking around to the back side of the house.

By the time we get there, the ground level (of the middle level of the lot) has fallen enough that the ground surface at the level of the basement floor. Thus, the basement has a direct door to the outside ... not having to lug stuff (like ashes from the fireplace, or a dead water-heater) up through the kitchen is excellent!

Here, she's standing in much the same place as the last photo, but she has turned to face a bit north of west.

In the near distrance is the transition down to the lowel level (the former tennis court). That pile of stones is a raised flower-bed I built on upper part of the slope; years later, just to the left of the bed, I put in stone steps down to the lower level. And, oddly enough, I found evidence that there had once been steps in just that location.

Just to the left of the photo is the drop-off into the woods (there are two lots down that way, larger than the three we've seen so far). The western property line is on the other side of the line of tree in the middle distance; with the former tennis court having been built up to be a level surface, the drop-off to the neighbor's properties is about five feet. The houses which can be seen here are the closest to mine; with the distance of their yards and mine, they'd be about 200 feet or more from my house. In the summer time, when the trees have leaves, those are the houses one can still see from the yard ... if one works at seeing them.

Here, she has walked about 10-15 feet to the east of the previous photo, now facing slightly south-southwest.

The sprawling tree is a cherry tree; birds always destroy all the cherries, but I think they're tart, rather than sweet..

The periwinkle covered hummock in the foreground is dirt out of the basement, from one of the necessary rebuilding of interior retaining walls (*). I really wanted it dumped farther into the woods to extend the usable level of the yard. But the guy I'd hired to help me dig out the dirt misunderstood, I guess. Or else, dumping it here was easier than dumping it over the edge just a few feet farther. Past the hummock at the cherry tree is the drop-off into the woods.

(*) The basement was at most a root cellar when the original house was built as a cottage (possibly as a barracks for the orchard workers). When they doubled the size of the house in the 1930s, they made the root cellar into a full basement. However, since most of the original foundations went only a couple of feet deep into the ground, they built retaining walls *inside* the basement to hold up the soil that was holding up those foundations. These retaining walls weren't built properly and had collapsed over the years.

In this next photo, we see some "new" yard on the other side of that hummock. This area was built up of more soil out of the basement, from the rebuilding of different interior foundation retaining walls. In this case, I went all the way back to the original foundations -- which, with the 1930s additions, were now effectively inside the perimeter of the house -- and rebuilt them from the ground up, thus making the basement a bit larger. This area isn't as large as it appears to be in the photo.

Here, she has continued walking east, she's standing behind the basement, facing south-southeast, looking into the woods and down the hill on which the property is perched. Seen here is part of a pile of stones carried out of the basement, most of them originally foundation stones for the house; they're piled here along the edge of the drop-off into the woods. The white things faintly visible across the middle of the photo are houses down at the bottom of the hill -- actually, that street is built in a gully carved by a small stream; in this picture, you can just barely make out the other side of the gully up above and past the houses in the gully.

This would be several feet further on from the previous photo (that's the one end of the same pile of stones); a view down into the woods.

This is east of the house, standing in the sixth and largest lot, the sort-of triangular one. Off in the distance, you can just make out the houses to the west of my property.

My other sister, the older twin of the one who took these photos, gave me that window which is placed horizontally high up in the greatroom wall. Originally I put it in the foyer (as can be seen in the third picture here), before I built the greatroom addition.

I plan to have a gas fireplace below it, that's why that wall is mosly solid (you might have noticed that I really like windows, and don't like expanses of wall without windows) ... also, I was hoping to eventually have a cut-glass panel made to fit inside that window, to catch the morning sun. But, now that the roof over the patio cuts down on the light coming in through the greatroom's double-doors, I'll need to think about putting a large window there.

The avove photo was taken near the same place as the previous, though closer to the edge of the hill, and facing south; with a steep drop-off into the woods just visible. You can see some of the houses on either side of the street down in the gully. That line of trees marching down the hill is somewhere near the property line; to the right of the trees is my property, to the left is the property of the house in the middle of the photo. To the far left, you can just make out a different neighbor's fenced garden which is half way up the hill from his house.

This was taken farther east of the house, in the largest lot (the one I call "The Prarie"), looking toward the east. You can kind of see someone's house down there, over the side of the hill. The hill is very steep here. At the same time, the camera was at an odd angle -- the horizon here really is horizontal, and most of these trees are growing straight up.

In the foreground is some sand I used to fill one of the holes my sister's van kindly dug for me when we were using it haul up building material for the patio roof.

It had just rained earlier that day (which is why we decided to use the time getting more supplies), and that summer was wetter than most, so the tire just dug into the ground -- the soil here is heavy clay; it's hard as rock when it's dry, and spongy mud when it's full of water. In the spring, or after a heavy rain, while standing silently in this part of the yard (*), you can *hear* the water flowing through the soil.

(*) This lot is the naturally highest elevation of the property, and for many blocks around; the area where the house stands is higher than this lot, but it seems to be fill-dirt, rather than natural elevation.

This was taken farther back from the edge of the hill than the last photo, facing more south. Look at that! from clear across the yard, you can still see that trench in the grass (though, were is the other one?).

This was taken from the driveway, north and east of the house, looking east into "The Prarie."

This was taken from the driveway north of the house, facing north into the lot where the old Italianate house used to stand.

This is north of the driveway, looking west (you can just see the bend of the drive to the left). The tree up the right side of the photo is this humongous weeping spruce.

This is north of the driveway, looking north. The demolished house stood to the right side, out of the picture. I call this area "The North Slope" and I'm tired of cutting the grass and raking the leaves there; I've decided to mulch most of it over and put in plantings, perhaps let it go to wildish trees. At the same time, there is that huge spruce (which is one reason, aside from the slope, that it's a pain to maintain), which I don't want to be damaged by deciduous trees.

You just know she took this next one because women like to see men working. Either that or she wanted documented proof that I do, occasionally, do some work.

That tree going diagonally across the picture fell over in an ice storm a few years back. One of these days, I mean to finish cutting it up (it's still alive).

Would you believe that is one year's worth of leaves? No? *sigh* You're right, it just felt like I carted this many up the hill and to the compost heap in one autumn.